My credit score has always suffered from my never having a mortgage. When I bought my house from my next door neighbor he said he wanted a cashier's check, so went to the credit union and got him one. It sure was nice having money before I got married. My credit score went down to 715 on December 5th and hasn't changed since. It should start going up any day now because I cashed in some savings bonds last week and paid over $7,000 on my credit cards since then, with almost another $3,400 in payments scheduled in the next few weeks. My $3,700 of Series EE bonds from back in the '80s were worth over $8,500 when I cashed them in Wednesday. I was guessing they would be worth $7,000+, but was pleasantly surprised at what it totaled.